Obesity continues to remain a serious health concern in modern society. Medical science has long appreciated the fact that obese individuals are more prone to suffering from cardiac problems, high blood pressure, and kidney ailments, not to mention diabetes. It has been estimated that 34% of all Americans are obese; that is, their body weight exceeds desirable body weight (according to Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tables) by 20% or more. In addition to suffering a disproportionate amount of physical ailments, obese individuals may also suffer psychologically under constant commercial media bombardment of "beautiful" people being skinny and svelte. Indeed, obese people may even suffer a social stigma simply from their appearance.
Overweight and obese individuals, recognizing the medical disadvantages and socially conscious of their excessive weight, have long sought ways of shedding their excess weight. While a combination of a reasonable diet and exercise may be best, most individuals tend to subscribe to one diet plan after the next in a vain effort to lose weight. And, as anyone who has tried any of the numerous diet plans available has experienced, the craving for food while on a diet can be quite acute and the urge to stray from the dietary regimen constant. Hence, any one individual on a diet may not necessarily lose weight over the course of a diet and a population of individuals on a given diet may experience a very large spread among individuals losing some weight (less than 2 pounds), a moderate amount of weight (between 2-9 pounds), and a considerable amount of weight (over 10 pounds).
Thus, there remains a need in the art for compositions and methods of losing weight which provide a more desirable weight loss distribution profile among a population of individuals and which specifically address a carbohydrate craving universally complained of by individuals on a diet, as well as increasing the feeling of well being and self-reported vigor among these affected individuals.